Late Delivery, page 16
‘I remember the case, of course, sir. And I recall that the North Wessex men were complimented by the judge,’ Inspector Parsons said.
‘Yes. The evidence against the boy seemed, and, indeed, still seems, incontestable, but certain facts have come to light since that make us wonder if the whole affair isn’t a great deal more complex than appeared at the time.’ Piet recounted the late delivery of the postcard to Sir Gordon, and the appearance of the extraordinary reversed-head stamp. He went on, ‘Investigation of the stamp is primarily a matter for the security service of the Post Office, but we come into it because there is evidence that the stamp was purchased at Netherwick on the evening before the murder. Further, the Post Office tells us that stamps are delivered to sub-offices like that at Netherwick in sheets of 200. We must assume, therefore, that a sheet containing 199 of these reversed-head stamps, on the assumption that only one was sold, exists somewhere. I don’t know if you’re a stamp collector, but you don’t need to be a collector to know that such rarities in an English stamp can be worth a great deal of money.’
‘I collected stamps as a boy, sir. Didn’t keep it up, but I do know how valuable rare stamps can be.’
‘Well, these could be extremely valuable, particularly as they appear to have passed through the Post Office. It seems unlikely that an eighteen-year-old youth could have had the organisation necessary for the production and distribution of a sheet of such stamps. He may, of course, have had a part to play in it, but the stamps were not found with the money taken from the Post Office, and nobody knew anything about them at the time of the trial.
‘Without going into a lot of unnecessary detail, I must explain that postage stamps are printed only by approved firms of security printers. They are printed on special paper with secret marking, visible only by electronic means, to identify the firm that produced them. The one reversed-head stamp that has come to light on the postcard to Sir Gordon appears to be on paper as supplied to, or identical with that supplied to, the security printers near Stadhampton. Outside the Post Office and ourselves, only the managing director of the plant knows of the existence of the reversed-head stamp, and he has provided apparently convincing evidence of the exact use of every inch of stamp-printing paper supplied to him. If his evidence means what it appears to mean, then the reversed-head stamp could not have had anything whatever to do with his firm. And yet the paper indicates that it did.
‘The Post Office security people are carrying the investigation farther back to try to trace every movement of paper with this particular mark on it from the papermakers. It is a hard job because we have no idea of the time involved – a small quantity of paper obtained in some unauthorised way may have been kept for a long time before being used, and it may have passed through several hands. It can’t go back for more than three years, because the mark on the paper was changed three years ago, but it is long enough to make really exhaustive inquiries extremely difficult.
‘Meanwhile, we cannot neglect the printing firm, for all the evidence apparently clearing it of any part in the matter. There is another angle of attack, and that is try to discover how the stamps got into Netherwick Post Office. The security people are satisfied that they could not have been delivered in any normal consignment of stamps: many different officials would have seen them, and it is too much to suppose that all would have missed the extraordinary reversed head. I carried out a small experiment myself which showed that a sheet of stamps could easily have been put into the Netherwick stamp book by buying something else in the shop and chatting to the Postmaster while he served you. But to prove that something can be done is very different from finding out who did it. We have one slender clue in the presence of a green Fiat car near the shop shortly before it closed on the evening before the murder – that was on April 7. There is no green Fiat owned in the village, so the car was not local. And there is some evidence that a similar green car was seen near the shop on the morning of the murder, April 8, so there is at least a thread of suspicion that whoever was in the car was in some way concerned with the stamps, and, possibly, in the murder.
‘All this was six months ago, and tracing the movements of an unknown car over such a period seems virtually hopeless. But it is all we have to go on, so we are doing what we can. To get to and from Netherwick the car must have passed through many places and we are making inquiries throughout the region to see if anyone remembers having seen a green Fiat anywhere either on the day before the murder or on the day of it. We are also hoping to question all the owners of green Fiats we may be able to trace. Of course we can say nothing about the real reason for our enquiries, so we are asking about a green Fiat, presumably stolen or taken without the owner’s consent, believed to have been used as a get-away car after an attack on a security van delivering cash.
‘Now there is not the slighest evidence that Miss Wells, who is secretary to the managing director of the printing works, has ever been to Netherwick in her life, but she does own a green Fiat, and as she has had it for just over a year it was in her possession at the relevant period. Without interviewing her directly, and without starting any rumours, do you think, Inspector, that you could discover anything of her movements over the time in question?’
‘With your access to the personnel manager you might start finding out whether she was physically free to be in Netherwick at the right times,’ Simon suggested. ‘If she was working normally on the afternoon before the murder she could scarcely have been in Netherwick around five or five thirty.’
‘Yes, I could do that,’ the inspector said. ‘But I can’t very well use the car story, because it would make it look as if we suspected Miss Wells of being involved.’
‘I should stick to the original tale about Continental ex-terrorists,’ Piet said. ‘You now know the dates that interest us. You could say that the Metropolitan Police want to know of any girls in senior secretarial jobs with printing firms who may have been on holiday, or absent from work for some reason, over that period. You needn’t try to explain why – blame it on Home Office bureaucracy, or anything else you like. You can then bring in the other girls on these cards, without seeming to focus inquiries on Miss Wells. But we do want to focus on Miss Wells. Can you make discreet local inquiries about her – find out whether she is often away at weekends, if possible where she goes, who her friends are, anything else that occurs to you? It says on her card that one of her interests is sailing. Where does she sail? Does she have a boat of her own?’
‘I should imagine that she sails on that big reservoir near Oxford. I know that the printing works has a dinghy-club that sails there, and she probably belongs to that. I can find out, anyway.’
‘Well, we’re much indebted to you,’ Piet said. ‘Get in touch with me, or the Chief Superintendent, as soon as you’ve got anything to report. Don’t worry if it seems negative, or trivial.’
‘Thank you for taking me into your confidence, sir. I’ll see that no hint of the existence of these strange stamps gets out.’
*
When Inspector Parsons had gone Piet rang Superintendent Carstairs, the man he had promoted to head the Fine Art Squad at New Scotland Yard when he was Assistant Commissioner there. ‘I’ve got a queer job for you, Harry,’ he said. ‘It’s not exactly in your normal run of business, but I’m sure you can handle it. For reasons which I won’t go into at the moment we’re interested in a Miss Rebecca Ernestine Wells, aged thirty-one, who worked for that big advertising agency, Creative Media Inc., some six or seven years ago. She left to have a holiday in Australia – her parents seem to have been fairly well off – and when she came back she didn’t rejoin the agency, but got a job with a firm of security printers near Stadhampton, where she still is. She was with the advertising agency for about four and a half years. I want to know exactly what she did there – if anybody remembers after all this time. Staff turnover in these agencies tends to be high, and there’s probably hardly anyone left who actually worked with her. But Creative Media is well-established, and there should be one or two directors or other senior people who were there when she was. Anyway, do what you can, and let me know anything you can find out. This is an urgent inquiry, and I’d like at least a preliminary report some time tomorrow.’
‘Can do,’ Piet’s former colleague said. ‘But it may be lateish in the afternoon before I ring you.’
*
Piet and Simon Begbroke shared another night’s vigil behind the hedge on the Netherwick-Foldworth road. Again nothing whatever happened.
XI
Encounter in a Ditch
PIET WAS TIED up all morning with routine work, had to address a Rotary Club luncheon meeting, and then to attend a committee of head teachers to discuss vandalism in schools. So it was Simon Begbroke who took the calls from Oxford and London.
Inspector Parsons got to work quickly and was on the phone just before noon. ‘Looks like that Miss Wells is in the clear,’ he said. ‘The office staff don’t have to clock on, but each department has an attendance book which they have to sign. Miss Wells was in her office on both April 7 and 8, so it looks as if she couldn’t very well have been at Netherwick.’
‘Is there a strict going-home time?’
‘The offices shut at five. If a senior secretary wanted to leave early for some reason she probably wouldn’t have much difficulty – it would be a matter of arranging things with her boss. But the personnel manager tells me it would be fairly exceptional, unless it was a case of illness. The firm is reckoned good to work for, and the staff have excellent conditions, but management is fairly strict, and discourages casual days off and poor timekeeping. All cases of sickness, even going home with a headache, have to be reported to the staff nurse, and are recorded. There is no record of any of the girls having been sick on either of those dates, and none was on holiday at the time.’
Simon wasn’t wholly satisfied that this was a good alibi. ‘I should imagine that in practice the secretary of the managing director can come and go much as she pleases,’ he observed.
‘Not so easy. There are people wanting the managing director all day, all telephone calls for him are put through to his secretary, and she couldn’t be away for long without it being noticed.’
‘Has she got an assistant, a number two who is available if she happens to be out?’
‘It’s not quite like that. She types all important letters for her boss, but there’s a typing pool which takes a load of work from all departments. There are no spare secretaries as such, but if one of the senior girls is on holiday, or away sick, one of the typists will be appointed to act for her. It’s the main way they get promotion. In some short-term emergency one director’s secretary may help out with another. There’s a case like that today. The personnel manager’s secretary has gone home with flu and as the managing director is away in London Miss Wells is helping out.’
‘Could you find out if the managing director was away on April 7?’
‘It wouldn’t be very easy without a formal inquiry. Possible, perhaps – I’ll have a go, but short of questioning him I’m not very hopeful. And in any case it wouldn’t signify much. We know that Miss Wells was in the office on that day, and she’d be needed to deal with telephone calls whether the managing director was there or not.’
‘It’s just a thought. It would be tidier to know. Have you had any luck with any of the other inquiries?’
‘Yes. Miss Wells is a leading member of the sailing club, and she won the county championship for dinghy racing last year. She has a dinghy of her own. Normally she keeps it at the club, but when she goes away on holiday she may take it with her. The Fiat is fitted with a towing hitch for the trailer. I saw it in the car park this morning.’
‘Well, you’ve done an excellent job, Inspector. I’m sorry to keep coming back at you, but see if you can get anywhere with those other matters.’
‘I’ll do what I can, sir, but as I said, I’m not all that hopeful. I take it you don’t want a formal inquiry?’
‘Not yet, anyhow. It may come to that, but I hope not. The evidence you have collected seems fairly conclusive.’
*
Superintendent Carstairs had quite a lot to report. ‘Your chief was quite right about the high turnover of these advertising agencies,’ he said, ‘but I was lucky in getting hold of a man who is Director of Design, and is apparently one of the founding partners of the firm. He remembers Miss Wells, and says he is still sorry that she left them.’
‘What was her job?’
‘She started off as what they call a General Copy Editor, which means helping to produce literature for clients, and to check display advertisements through their various stages of production. Each copy editor is assigned to a group of clients, and from checking things and dealing with printers goes on, if he or she is any good, to advising and helping with the actual writing. Miss Wells was very good.’
‘Can he remember any of the clients?’
‘Well, he could have worked out a complete list by going through old records, but from what Piet said I thought a quick impression was likely to be more useful at the moment. He recalls two clients in particular, Nourishing Foods, the big manufacturers of cereals, and a slightly unusual client called Penny Black Investments, which is a firm of postage stamp dealers specialising in British issues. Nourishing Foods was straightforward advertising of packaged breakfast foods. They were pleased with Miss Wells, and although it is their policy to change their advertising agents every couple of years they stayed with Creative Media for three years, because of her. The account has gone somewhere else now. Penny Black Investments was a real success story. The firm was a small local concern operating from Newcastle, when a new man bought it and invested in some big-time advertising. It did so well that it’s now among the half dozen or so really big international stamp dealers. It was because of her work with Penny Black that Miss Wells changed her job from copy editing to the design side of the business. She produced some of the best catalogues in the stamp business, and Penny Black were so distressed when she left that they offered to set her up in an advertising agency of her own.’
‘But she wasn’t interested?’
‘Apparently not. She wanted to go to Australia, and that was that.’
‘What happened to Penny Black?’
‘They stayed with Creative Media, and are among their most valuable clients.’
‘Why didn’t Miss Wells go back to Creative Media when she came home from Australia?’
‘My man has no idea. In fact, he didn’t know that she’d come back from Australia. He thought she’d probably married and settled down out there.’
‘He should have known. When she got her present job she needed a reference from her previous employers.’
‘I thought about that, and I put it to him discreetly – I had to be careful, you see, because I couldn’t really give any reason for my inquiries, so I explained vaguely that she’d come up through the Missing Persons Bureau who’d been asked by a relative if she could be traced. Fortunately he lives in a world of art design, and doesn’t seem to question police activities. I asked about references and he said that it wouldn’t have come to him. It would be a matter for the company secretary, and there’d been two new secretaries since her time. He said he’d try to find out for me, but that correspondence might not have been kept and the present company secretary wouldn’t know anything about it, anyway. I think that’s about the lot.’
‘Well, I’ll pass it all on to Piet when I see him later this afternoon. I know he’ll want me to thank you – you’ve got hold of a lot of interesting stuff, some of which may be of the first importance.’
‘Let me know if there’s anything else we can do.’
*
It was close on six o’clock before Simon could get hold of Piet. ‘I’m sick of this office,’ Piet said. ‘Come and have a drink and a meal.’ In Piet’s study Simon reported on his two telephone calls. ‘If somebody wanted to frame that girl they could scarcely have done better.’ Piet said. ‘Her history in the advertising agency is immensely significant – but significant of what? We now know that she is familiar with the market for rare British stamps, that she certainly had an opportunity of getting hold of some of the special stamp paper, and that she has a green Fiat. But there’s not a scrap of real evidence against her, and Inspector Parsons’s inquiries tend to show that she couldn’t have been in Netherwick at the right sort of time. And assuming that she was mixed up in a fiddle over the stamps, why the murder, and a singularly brutal murder? Where are the stamps, anyway? If there’s anything in the green Fiat story for the morning of the murder, and if – a huge “if” – the car in fact belonged to Miss Wells, one might assume that she recovered the stamps and took them away with her. I suppose we could get a search warrant and go over her home, but if she has got the stamps there’s no particular reason why she should be keeping them at home – more likely they’d be in a bank, or safe deposit somewhere. And if we can’t find the stamps in her possession, what could we ever prove? Nothing.’
‘To be strictly accurate, there isn’t any real evidence that the stamps exist,’ Simon said. ‘We know that one reversed-head stamp existed, but it’s guesswork that it came from a sheet.’
‘A reasonable guess. From the point of view of a forger, one stamp sold casually in a sub Post Office seems mad. A sheet of them which could be sold at intervals perhaps over several years makes some sort of sense.’
